Wendenal affected an incredulous and grave expression. “You dare speak of the King this way, when you know your life already hangs by a thread?”
The man held his gaze. “I do so because you are William de Wendenal, High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, and I know your true feelings for Richard.”
Wendenal’s guest took this as his cue to step from the shadows. “I think we can dismiss the guards, now,” he said. The guards hesitated, and looked to Wendenal. He gave a curt nod. As they filed out, the guest walked up to Wendenal’s prisoner, who stood a full head higher than he, and lingered for a moment, looking up at him, his wine goblet still in his hand.
“Do you know me?” he said. The man looked deep into his face, frowning. “Let me simplify matters. I am John. Prince of England. There are other things – duchies and the like – but that’s the main one. I nearly had Aquitaine once. And then there was Ireland – but the less said about that, the better. I am also brother to Richard the Lionhearted. Lucky me. Now, perhaps, you can tell me who you are?” He raised his eyebrows and gave a wry smile. “It seems a fair exchange.” Wendenal marvelled at the easy charm that he knew he himself lacked.
The man looked from Wendenal to John and back, for the first time flustered. Then he bowed his head in what seemed genuine humility. “Gisburne,” he said. “Guy of Gisburne.” Then he added, awkwardly. “We met once. A long time ago...”
“Indeed?” smiled John.
“If my words caused offence...”
“They did not,” said John. He unfolded the fingers of his right hand and examined the gold rings upon them.
“Well, Guy of Gisburne,” said John. “If de Gaillon was your mentor, then you were once destined to be a knight, were you not...?”
Gisburne lowered his head again – but this time Wendenal thought it looked more like shame. “I was robbed of that opportunity by his death. His disgrace...”
John’s eyes narrowed. He nodded slowly.
“So. Another thing lost to you, courtesy of my dear brother.” Gisburne, his eyes still downcast, said nothing. John turned suddenly. “Sir William, will you release your prisoner to me?”
“As you wish, my lord.” It was a startling request, but not one Wendenal felt inclined to refuse. He was happy to have him out of his hair. Though what John wanted with this strange, shabby character, he could not imagine.
The prince sauntered over to the fireside, took a sip from his goblet, and set it carefully down on the hearth. “We thought we had found someone with information about Hood, Sir William. You feared he would disappoint us. But I see we have found much more than was promised.”
He wandered back to Gisburne, and before Wendenal knew what had happened, struck his bare hand across Gisburne’s face with all his strength. Gisburne staggered, his expression one of shock.
“What my brother took from you, I now give back, Sir Guy of Gisburne,” he said. “Be a true knight, and courageous in the face of your enemies.”
His face red from the blow, Gisburne stared wide-eyed at the prince, as if unable to comprehend this shift in his fortunes.
“You came late to your manhood, Sir Knight,” said John with a smile. “We must ensure you make the most of it.”
LI
Forêt de Boulogne – December, 1191
SINGING WAS THE usual way Lucatz the Enginer kept his spirits up. It didn’t really matter what the tune – anything was grist to Lucatz’s mill. A ballad. A hymn. A bawdy song, if there was no one about. Then, he would raise his voice to the heavens until it cracked with laughter at the fate of the squire and the randy milkmaid, or the bibulous monk and his ass.
Today it was different. Today, he made do with murmuring under his breath, or kept his lip buttoned altogether. Not that he couldn’t do with his spirits being raised. For the past few hours he had been lashed by freezing rain, and in that time had also discovered that the urgency with which he had set out had made him forget to pack either his leather cloak or a change of clothes. He was also peeved by the need to travel so far at such short notice, and unnerved by his destination: Castel Mercheval.
He’d had dealings with its lord before – that, presumably, was why it was he who had been summoned. Lucatz had designed and built many of the siege engines (technically counter-siege engines, but he hadn’t pressed the point) that bristled Castel Mercheval’s battlements. Trebuchets, ballistas, mangonels. Mechanisms for delivering boulders, dead bodies, scalding sand and gravel and a variety of hot, noxious or flaming liquids. He had even persuaded Tancred to let him experiment with a “scorpion”. Tancred’s own inspiration – a kind of ballista meant to fire a spinning, seven-bladed star the size of a meat dish – proved beyond his capabilities to realise, despite Tancred’s chillingly intense explanation of the necessity for, and holy significance of, each one of those seven blades.
Why the master of Castel Mercheval required quite so many devices, beyond feeding his own obsession, Lucatz could not guess. But he wasn’t one to complain. At least, not at first. It had meant two years work, after all. But then there had been the other mechanisms – the ones meant for restraint and torture. Even these weren’t normal. They were for special kinds of torture – things he had never seen before. It was a world that was alien to him, and he liked it that way. At Castel Mercheval he’d been forced to think about it too much, for too long, and in far too much detail. Death and pain at a distance he could cope with, but that... And there had been Tancred himself. And his torturer – that odious man. With any luck he had since died. Lucatz imagined him having been eaten up and spat out by one of his own devices, rebelling against the tasks it had been called upon to perform. By the end of it, Lucatz had crept away, far wealthier, unsure quite what he had contributed to the sum of human happiness, and sincerely hoping he would never see or hear from the White Devil again. He still did, from time to time, in his nightmares.
He supposed he should be flattered that such a forbidding master thought him the best man for this job. And the pay would certainly be good. Tancred was generous in that one way – though even as he thought it, the words forming in his head, he felt their ghastly incongruity: Tancred. Generous. Like a cat was merciful to a mouse in not killing it straight away. Well, this job was straightforward, at least. And it would not bring him up against those things – that man. But at this moment he’d swap all the world’s money and respect to be home by his own fire with a mug of hot, spiced cider.
This forest also made him nervous. Maybe for some bumpkin, this place was bliss, but he hated the stillness of it – yearned for the human stink, and noise, and bustle of Amiens. The open countryside around the city was perfectly fine, too. It was peaceful, but still orderly – nature shaped by honest human toil. But this...
He felt anxious when completely separated from the influence of man. The dark and disorder of this forest – the thick, unrelenting profusion of it, evident even in the wintery ghosts that now loomed resentfully on every side – oppressed him. There were no human voices to be heard here, and probably only slinking, lank-furred creatures to hear his (the thought made him shudder; he pictured weird whiskered things with long, moist, snuffling noses and matted coats like wet blankets). God knew the sound of a human voice would be a welcome thing, even if it were his own. But something in the forest’s mute, brooding presence kept him silent. Thus, no sound accompanied his passing but the wheels of the wagon and the hooves of the horses, the cold drip of the rain and the groan of the trees in the bitter wind.
As the forest had gone on and on, he had begun to understand the source of his disquiet. This ancient, dark place offered nothing distinct, nothing known or knowable. Just shadow. Who knew what it hid? This was a thought he had struggled not to acknowledge – to keep at bay, in dread of what his imagination might summon up. For it was not just the rational fear of announcing himself to bears, or wolves, or outlaws that made him bite his tongue. It was a deeper terror of foul things that had no place in God’s creation, that cr
ept in through the dark places – whether in the mind or the forest – and filled up those potent, waiting shadows with their unearthly, infectious forms.
He shook his head, drips flying from his hood. Think of something else... Work. Processes. Yes, that was it. In his mind – for perhaps the third time that journey – he began to make an inventory of the contents of the wagon. The long wooden chest containing his tools. A small cauldron of pitch and a number of pitch sticks. The second smallest of his anvils. Several lengths of rope, gauges various. Ditto chains. A barrel of hinges, catches and sundry parts. A box of nails and rivets. Parchments, quills and black gall ink. A leather apron and gauntlets. Lenses. A wide, segmented case containing jars of a variety of powders and solutions, mostly combustible or caustic.
A sound turned his head. Something falling in the forest, echoing weirdly amongst the wet trees. He sighed, shuddered and turned back. Well, anyway... There was hardly any eventuality for which he wasn’t prepared. He’d packed in haste, starting with the things he knew he was likely to need – but in the end had simply loaded almost everything he had. It was quicker and easier to bring the lot. He certainly didn’t want to be found wanting. Not after this long trek, and with the eyes of Tancred and his knights upon him. The thought of those eyes – Tancred’s eyes, that face – chilled him to the bone.
Another sound made him start. A crack. One of his horses shied and whinnied. This was not something falling. It was something moving. A branch snapping under its weight. The horse settled quickly – they were placid beasts – but as it did so, something on the winding path ahead came into view. A dark, vertical shape in the road.
Lucatz felt his throat tighten. It was a figure. Or at least, a kind of figure. It stood motionless, strangely hunched, its limbs twisted and uneven and – now he could see – unnaturally long. His first thought – to reach for his knife – died in him as he stared.
It was not human. He did not even believe it was alive. It could not be. Steeling himself, he urged his animals on. As he neared, the weird shape resolved into a crude construction of branches and twigs, bunched and lashed together to create a life-sized mockery of the human form. The horses balked before the primitive mannequin before he had need to stop them. He supposed he should have been relieved. Had it been a man in the road – a man bent on his destruction – he might now be fighting for his life.
Yet somehow – and this was the irrational part of it – this was worse.
In asking himself who had put this here, and why, he had begun to reach horrible conclusions. He had begun to believe, with creeping unease, that it was put here for him – that the horrid form was a symbol for what was to come; a warning of some imminent, terrible fate.
Close by, to his right, there was a creak. A groan of wood. Another crack. Startled, his eyes flew to the trees.
And there, in the flicker of a moment, he saw it. Dark and bat-like, as big as a man, it flapped its leathery, winged body and was gone. Most horrid of all, however, was the blackened human face that grinned from its head. His mouth dry, his heart pounding, Lucatz had a brief moment to stare into the vacant shadows beyond the spiked branches before a great weight smashed into him with the force of a horse’s kick.
The last thing he remembered as he fell was the smell of damp wood. Then all was black.
LII
ALDRIC FITZ ROLF looked out from the rain-slicked battlements of Castel Mercheval and saw the Devil.
A moment before, the dark opening at the edge of the trees – the one shaped like a ragged, screaming mouth – had been empty shadow. Just the same familiar, blank space that it had been all day, and – but for the passing of a bird, or rabbit, or the long, lean figure of a fox – for countless days before that. Thrusting out in front of the yawning hole, and largely the reason for it, was the great grey-brown slab that some called Arthur’s Table – a flat outcrop of rock punctuating the higher ground some fifty yards left of where the winding dirt road emerged from the woods.
To Aldric it had always resembled a listing raft rather than a table. In summer, the hectic foliage of the forest even seemed to be breaking upon it like a great green wave.
Now, its surface shimmered in the slanting rain. Aldric had been glancing at it in the grey daylight, thinking abstractly about the gripes in his stomach, and was turning away to make some comment upon it to Bertrans, his fellow watchman, when the fleeting vision had appeared; tall, hooded, with no visible face, but – he realised only after it had gone a second later – a pair of tiny horns upon its head.
“What the Hell was that?” he said. Frowning, he nodded towards the place. “There...”
Bertrans scanned the forest’s edge and laughed. “You’re jumpy today,” he said. “Nothing living that I can see, except us up here in this piss-poor weather.”
Aldric squinted at the dark spaces again, his eyes stinging, rain running from his helm in cold rivulets that crept down his neck. “There was something...” he said. “Beyond the rock. No question.”
Bertrans studied him with narrowed eyes. “What did it look like?” All dismissiveness was now gone from his tone. Bertrans knew Aldric was no fool.
“A man, or...” Aldric’s voice trailed away. The wind gusted, making the whole facade of trees sigh and shudder – and even Aldric doubted his own judgement. He gave a snort of agitation and turned from the forest.
Bertrans coughed and spat. “Might’ve been a deer. They don’t normally come so close, but sometimes when the weather’s bad they’re forced down...” He stopped abruptly.
Aldric had turned away to look out across the castle courtyard, seeming to have heard a strange sound from that direction – oddly familiar, but one he couldn’t quite place. “Forced down...?” he said, urging his comrade to finish.
But when Aldric looked back at him, the man seemed paralysed in some kind of agony. As he watched, Bertrans’s eyes seemed to bulge out of his head, his face growing purple, his throat rasping as if constricted. At first, he thought it must be one of Bertrans’s jokes. “Are you all right?” he asked with a laugh.
Only as Bertrans fell did Aldric see the arrow. It had hit where his neck joined his shoulders, entering the muscle just above the right shoulder blade and emerging above the left side of his collarbone.
Stiff as a board, Bertrans tottered forward with a strange, shuffling gait and, before Aldric could act, pitched head-first off the walkway.
He dropped behind the parapet, his back to the stone near where Bertrans’s crossbow still leaned, hearing its owner’s body hit the ground with a sickening thud.
“Alarm!” he cried. “Alarm!” The effect was instantaneous; the ordered chaos of the castle’s bustling interior instantly transformed. As one, the castle’s knights, soldiers and servants going about their daily tasks changed direction like a flock of birds in flight. Some broke into a run, others dropped what they were doing and returned the way they had come. Many scaled ladders and steps to their positions on the ramparts and towers. Inner doors were secured. Horses prepared. Siege weapons were brought to readiness. It was a drill they had performed a thousand times under their master’s iron regime – on a daily basis, sometimes at night, and in all weathers. Tancred believed in total battle readiness, and strict discipline. The penalties for those who failed in their duties – who failed God – were harsh. In Tancred’s world, there were no half measures. No mercy to which one could appeal. No ambiguities. There were those who respected him, many more who hated him, but none who did not fear him.
Then, from the great square keep, came Tancred himself – his armour on, his sword buckled, his surcoat gleaming white; Aldric had not once seen him otherwise attired – followed closely behind by Fulke and Ulrich. The expressions of the two men – one flushed, the other pale – were something between trepidation and outrage; that of Tancred, as cold and implacable as the stone of his castle. That they had been questioning the squire and the woman was beyond doubt, but whether the pair had given up any information was a
nother matter. Above the urgent clamour, as he cocked and loaded his crossbow, Aldric heard Tancred’s voice, like metal against rock. “Who called it?” A serjeant pointed up to where Aldric was crouched.
Then, from Aldric’s left, along the rampart some dozen yards, came a harsh cry and the heavy clatter of a crossbow falling onto flagstones. It was Engenulf. Aldric had heard the same hiss he’d heard before Bertrans’s death, and now made the connection. An arrow. He turned to see Engenulf motionless, a look of near comical astonishment on his face, the arrow pinning his bleeding right hand to his breastbone. Before he could blink – and in stark contrast to Bertrans – Engenulf crumpled like a rag as if his bones had been sucked out, then slithered over the edge of the walkway to the courtyard below.
Tancred had reached the wooden steps to the rampart now, but something Ulrich said stopped him. Aldric did not hear what it was – just the low rasp of his voice – but the man’s hand was extended in a gesture of caution. Tancred did not even look at him. “God will protect me,” he said, and advanced up the steps like a wraith.
It occurred to Aldric then to attempt to locate the position of their attackers before Tancred arrived and questioned him on the subject. He raised his head with slow caution into the space of the nearest crenel until the edge of the trees was revealed to him. The attackers – whoever they might be – were clearly keen shots with a bow, and their number as yet unknown. Aldric had no wish to be next. But it was something more than self-preservation that drove him. His chief desire, at that precise moment, was to live long enough to plant the head of Bertrans’s killer on a stake.
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